Location: South Australia, Australia, The southern Hemisphere, The Earth, The Milky Way, The Universe

Posts: 85

Pannacotta serving ideas

Hi,

We are new to this forums so yeah please dont be mean to us. We are studying year 12 Food and Hospitality and our first cooking task is to make pannacotta. We have been given the recipe to make it and we were looking for serving tips or ways to serve it. We are gonna make vanilla pannacotta with berry jelly and it is mainly raspberries.

Does anyone have any good ideas or can direct us to somewhere that does?

Is the sauce you are going to be serving with it have a fair bit of juice? If so I would consider straining it to get a nice bit of clear colourful liquid which you could then pour in a puddle (real easy if the plate your using has a area that is lower down than the rest of the plate), place the panna cotta on top of this pool of sauce and then spoon a small amount of the sauce solids on the top so they ooze down the sides.

Of course considering the vanilla panna cotta will be white and the sauce a nice vivid red a small sprig of mint leaves would not go astray perched on top either.

If you want to get particularly adventurous you could always create a sugar basket/cage or a flat version of one, it is fairly easy to do (well the purely circular version is alot easier than a sugar basket/cage). If using a cage you could do the same thing as above an then place the cage over the panna cotta.

You could also go for serving sweet, thin wafer biscuits leaning against/across the panna cotta which would also provide a textural contrast to the smooth softness of the panna cotta and sauce.

Hi Kim & Krysten, welcome to DC! I can assure that no one here would ever be mean to you, very proud of the fact that we're simply not that kind of forum. We welcome all questions and levels of cooking skills, don't worry, you're both right at home here

Haggis gave you some awesome ideas, many of which are ways that pro chefs like to plate up their panacotta in restaurants, as well as home cooks alike. Another thing you can do (if the dish that you made the pannacotta was deep enough) is to very, very gently (a sharp knife that has been quickly flashed under hot water helps here) is to cut the pannacotta in half horizontally. Ever so delicately remove the two layers and place a little of your berry sauce on the bottom layer, topped with a few whole berries. Then put the top layer of pannacotta back on top.

Mint goes so well with panacotta as Haggis mentioned, so does a touch of citrus peal (a curl of fresh lemon peal for example). Another good point (if possible) is to use a real vanilla bean (as opposed to vanilla extract) in the panacotta, the flavour from the seeds are gorgeous and work so well in a creamy, mild dish like this. As a twist, you could ways try almond extract instead of vanilla, which does go so well with raspberries

Location: South Australia, Australia, The southern Hemisphere, The Earth, The Milky Way, The Universe

Posts: 85

Wow thanks for your ideas guys. They sound really great. Our pannacotta however is not just vanilla pannacotta it has a layer at the top (when turned out of the cup) that is jelly which is berry flavoured so the whole thing is not just vanilla.

The sauce as well has not been decided on we have to come up with our own sauces of whatever we want to put on it. I love the idea of a sprig of mint on top. Also we were thinking what about those scrolls of chocolate you can make? If you dont understand what i mean im talking about how you scrape chocolate with a vege peeler and it sort of scrolls up.

A peeler will make chocolate curls, however the chocolate must be warmed to room temperature before you do so.

If you really want it to look fantastic see if you can get a hold of some persian/turkish fairy floss (what you guys call cotton candy) its absolutely amazing stuff.

You could also serve the panna cotta on top of a 2-3 savoiardi biscuits (ladyfingers/spongefingers) that have been dipped in perhaps some of the berry juice to soften them, or some type of liqueur if you really want to jazz things up a bit.

I've served panna cotta in martini glasses. The panna cotta has to set in those glasses though. After it's set, you can smooth your jelly layer on top. Maybe garnish with something that will provide some height. Once I served kaffir lime leaf & coconut pannacotta then stuck a 7-inch long blade of pandanus leaf into one side of the pannacotta, so that the leaf gracefully bent in an arc. The guests were impressed

Get about a punnet of mixed berries, blitz them in a food processor then strain through a sieve or some muslin. Then put a little vanilla extract into this, about a teaspoon. When i say vanilla extract, i mean the good stuff, get it from Lakeland Limited, not that artificial crap. Mix that in whatever you strained the berries into and thats that. You should have a lovely sauce/coulis that you can now put on the bottom of your bowl/plate. Use the back of a spoon and flatten the sauce out from the middle. Place the pannacotta onto this, then drizzle a little of the sauce on top.
Hope that helps. :)

Location: South Australia, Australia, The southern Hemisphere, The Earth, The Milky Way, The Universe

Posts: 85

Oh thankyou sooooooo much. We scrapped our original ideas and decided to use a sauce instead of chocolate. We thought of using a berry sauce as well to go with the berry jelly on top but werent sure what to put in it. We decided to check on here for replys first and then look for a recipe but it was like you read our minds because you gave us a recipe! Now we dont have to search for them any more.

Our presentation day is tomorrow so when they are done we will take photos and post them to show you what we did.